One More Saturday Night
by whiskeyneat
Summary: For everyone else, it's just one more Saturday night in 1964, but for Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark, they've both received letters that will change the course of their lives forever. Vietnam War AU. Underthorne, Everlark. Gale x Madge, Katniss x Peeta.
1. Chapter 1

**I. Fortunate Son (1964)  
**  
**CHAPTER ONE**

****It's eight o'clock on a sultry July night in Twelvetrees, West Virginia. Down at the carhop, Katniss Everdeen has just switched shifts with Joanna Mason, and as she leans against the freezer, stretching her sore calves, she's unaware that the boy who's just rolled up in the parking lot with his brothers, the one who carries fifty pound sacks of flour to the back door and gets tongue tied in her presence, would give her the world if he could.

While Joanna slicks red lipstick on her sultry mouth and clips on her garters under the flickering yellow light of the washroom, Peeta Mellark sits in the parking lot of the carhop and turns the words he'll say to Katniss Everdeen over and over again in his mouth, the official decision letter from the draft board burning a hole in his pocket.

_He ain't needed here. Got some brothers. That son of yours has always been useless. Let the army straighten him out, Mr Mellark_. His mother's words feel like they've been seared into his soul, deeper than the burns from his many years of tending the ovens in their family bakery.

"Peet! Cat got your tongue?" Delly giggles, elbowing Peeta in the side. Delly is like a sister to him, they grew up side by side in the garden between the shoe shop and the bakery, fast friends since the day she found him hiding from his mother under the rose bushes.

Unlike Peeta, Delly has always known what she'll do when she grows up, and that's marrying the boy with the easy, charming smile who sits even now with one arm slung over her shoulders - Peeta's second eldest brother, Wheatley. Their lives are laid out before them like the instructions for a gingerbread house, all it takes it for the pieces to be glued together, like a fairy story, falling into place.

The letter crinkles in Peeta's shirt pocket when he pats it, and as if he knows what's on Peeta's mind, Wheatley nudges him unsubtly. "You gonna tell her?" Peeta has never been close to his older brothers, and this spirit of bonhomie at the eleventh hour feels like they've already picked out a plot at the VA cemetery for him.

Peeta shrugs, feeling a blush heat his cheeks as Katniss skates on by.

"My, I wish I could pull off those dungarees!" Delly chirps, pointing at Katniss.

"I think she looks..." _Like a stone cold fox. _"...Outta sight." And Katniss does. She's got her dark hair pinned up like old posters of Rosie the Riveter, with a plain scrubbed face and not a hint of makeup. Yet something about her is still so inexpressibly arresting that Peeta can't help but stare at her, lost in thought, as she skates between the cars, taking orders left and right.

She's a devil on skates: her form needs work, but she can serve five cars in under fifteen minutes, with nary a drop of root beer float spilled in a single lap. She never smiles, but Peeta knows any boy in town would love to take her to Lookout Point for some necking. The sexual revolution may not have made it this deep into the mountains yet, but when there's nothing else to do, people make their own fun.

Still, the line is drawn between the Seam and Town, Katniss is the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and Peeta may not want to admit it to himself, but that's the real reason any town boy would take her out, to see if she'd go all the way, or if she'd keep her legs locked up tight.

As she passes by the finned Buick Electra, she looks up and meets Peeta's eye, and though she never breaks the flow, he sees her look back again, and he could swear she almost smiles.

•••

_I don't know how you do it,_ Joanna had said earlier, with a tone in her voice that might have been a slap or a smile. _You might just make something of yourself and get out of this town, kiddo._ What she doesn't say is written on every silver scar that marks her flesh, but Katniss lets Joanna keep her secrets, and that's why they're friends.

When Joanna slams out the back door, Katniss hears a Caddy roar in the alley like a tiger, and there's the scream of her friend's high laughter before the only sound left in the waiting night is crickets and the catchy song trickling from the kitchen radio: _Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do..._

For a moment, Katniss is lost in the past, and she stares out the back door as the moths flutter at the neon lights, feeling every year of her eighteen summers and twenty more besides, as though she's faded to a pale reflection of herself before she's ever gotten her or Prim out of this place.

"You look like you're run off your feet, girl. Sit down and take a breather. Them Town kids can wait." Chaff plucks the order pad from Katniss's fingers and starts putting up the tickets as he steers her to a chair beside the fan. "'Sides, Mitch would kill me if you fainted on my watch." Chaff passes Katniss an ice cold bottle of pop, and she feels herself sag in relief.

Chaff once flew planes with Abernathy, back in the war with Germany, but beyond that she hardly knows him at all, for Chaff never talks about the city he left to come to their little town that sleeps as the rest of the modern world passes them by.

The bottle of pop sweats in her hands, and it makes her think of the way her pa would bring home one as a treat when she was little, to be shared sip by tiny sip with her baby sister, each fizzy bubble held in their mouths for as long as they could, to make the sweetness last.

"Shit, Miss Undersee was supposed to be here an hour ago." Chaff smacks a hand on the counter, but Katniss can tell he doesn't half care. "If she's late one more time, I'll fire her ass. I don't care who her daddy is."

Before Katniss can make up an excuse for Madge (the secret of how sick Madge's mama is lies on her tongue like a wedge of pitch, sticking her gums together), Chaff passes her a twist of greasy fries and a milkshake (strawberry, like the wild berries she used to sell door to door with her best friend Gale, before he went down the mine). She can't believe how ravenous she is, anyone would think she hadn't eaten since breakfast, and that's as close to the truth as she's willing to admit to herself.

Ever since the mine explosion that killed her father, back in '55, Katniss has had to shift for herself and her sister, keeping their small family afloat. The mine owner sent their mama to a sanitarium in Richmond to recuperate. When she returned, she seemed half the person she used to be, and had to return again and again to be put back together for something called _hysteria_.

But that's all water under the bridge now, and Katniss is no longer that frightened eleven year old girl, forced to survive on the kindness of strangers. Abernathy took pity on her and hired her as soon as she turned twelve to work for him at the carhop, and she'll spend her life trying to repay a debt that can never be quantified.

Mr Abernathy passed out hours ago, he's almost as fond of white lightning as Katniss is of making extra tips, anything to get out of this town before it's too late. She's got a scholarship to the university, the same place Abernathy went to, even though she's no more likely to study physics than she is to sprout wings and fly away from the dust of this coal town.

At midnight, when the neon lights shut down, and all the moths in town flock to the lustrous glow the stars make over the quarry pond, she and Chaff will use all of their combined strength to roll Abernathy over and make sure he doesn't drown in his own vomit. That's part of her debt, and she'll be deep in it until she shuffles off this mortal coil.

So when Madge bursts through the door, not a single strand of blonde hair out of place, Katniss is too full of sugar and grease to protest when Madge insists she'll take the next orders out.

"Been pilin' up." Chaff nods to the tickets. "That little Cartwright gal came by and dropped 'em off while Katniss took a breather. By the sounds of it, they're gittin' liquored up out there." But he doesn't make a move to stop Madge from going out the door.

Madge blows a strand of golden hair off her forehead and adjusts her headband, her pale fingers flying over the laces in an intricate pattern as she re-ties her skates. They're pristine white, the kind that Katniss's little sister Primrose would give her eye teeth for, but nothing in the Seam stays white for long, not with the coal dust that gets onto everything, coating it like funerary ash.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says to Katniss, biting her lip and looking away from her friend. Chaff makes a sound of deep disgust in his throat, and passes Madge the tray. Once she's skated from sight, he turns back to the fryer, and turns up the radio.

•••

Madge has skated eleven blocks to get here, refusing to take her daddy's car like some spoiled little debutante, although she might have a year ago, before she went to university, before everything began to fall apart. There's a run in her stockings that will have to be repaired soon, and a burning in her lungs that reminds her she's alive. Now that she's been to university and back, this town feels smaller than ever, but it's a good feeling, as if nothing bad could ever happen here, cocooned from the world outside.

When the lights turn down low, and the town sleeps, she'll lie in her bed and listen to the hum of the locusts in the sycamore tree, where the initials _M+G _are still scarred across the trunk, as if life followed a pattern, laid out like a children's jumping rhyme.

•••

_It is quite propitious, as far as plans go, Miss Undersee_. Seneca dabbed at his lips with his napkin. His mustache was damp with moisture, and she felt her stomach curdle at the way it gleamed wetly under the lights. She just hoped he got this whole breakup over with soon, because she was sure that one more minute of having to endure his rubbery lips and his mechanical groping on her knee would make her commit an entirely unladylike act.

As Madge fantasized about flipping Seneca the bird, he laid a clammy hand over hers and took a deep breath. _With my money and your breeding, I think a marriage would suit the pair of us, don't you agree?  
_  
_But my degree... I haven't finished it yet._ Madge's smile froze in place, suddenly entirely too aware of the predatory gazes of the waitstaff, as though the entire moment had been orchestrated. She felt blindsided, and furious all at once. But good manners won out, and she smiled again, with a cheer she did not feel.

Seneca laughed, a touch of condescension creeping into his voice. _I'm not marrying you for your __**mind**__, Margareta. Your father said you might be stubborn._

Madge reeled back in shock, stunned. Suddenly it all seemed too much: the soft candlelight felt as garish as the cheap lights of a carnival fanfare, the white wine in her glass tasted like rotgut mash. She tried to tug her hand back from Seneca's, but he held it fast. _You talked to my daddy already? _Her voice seemed to be coming from far away.

_Why, of course I did, darling._ Seneca squeezed her arm tight, a warning. _Now, if you want to finish your university degree by mail, that's fine with me, but you won't need any of that when you're Mrs Seneca Crane, wife to the next senator of West Virginia_. He continued his monologue, the room fading to a single pinprick of light until all Madge could see was that flashy diamond, all she could hear was the sound of champagne corks and applause, and all she could feel was the tightness closing in on her, as if Seneca's ring was around her neck instead of her finger.

**Author's Notes:** if you want to read this in its true form, with lyrics and soundtrack, hop on over to ao3 and check it out there too. This part of the story is three chapters, and I'll be updating it every other day. I write primarily for another fandom, so my fics there take up a lot of my time, but if you want to stay in the loop for this fic, come check out my tumblr, whiskeykneat.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

Smoke curls upwards from the cigarette dangling out of Joanna's mouth as she looks Gale up and down. It's near ten o'clock, long after the street lamps have clicked on, and the air outside the carhop smells of oil and grease. Gale has just gotten off his shift at the mine, he's scrubbed and scrubbed at the coal dust in the seams of his hands, but with back to back twelve hour shifts, they'll never be clean.

The letter that came this morning from the capital is burning a hole in his pocket.

He'd taken one look at it sitting forlornly on the kitchen table next to his warm dinner, and when his mother's step had creaked on the bottom stair, Gale didn't have to look past the washtub curtain to know that she'd been crying, he could hear it in her voice.

_I'm going out, Ma,_ he'd said, but hadn't stopped her when she'd drawn him tight to her thin body for a fierce hug.

_You tell Katniss, Gale. Tell her tonight, _Hazelle had whispered, wiping her eyes. _And give her my love.  
_  
"Katniss?" Joanna purses her red lips, sucking on the cigarette so hard he can imagine what those sinful red lips would look like wrapped around his cock, and Gale gives her a once-over of his own. "She's working. Took my shift." She brushes past him, letting him feel every inch of her pointy brassiere pressing up to his chest. "You're gonna have a hard time prying her from that dump up to Lookout Point tonight." Joanna rolls her eyes, nodding towards the parking lot, full of every warm-blooded teenager in town, as if there's nothing better to do on a Saturday night in 1964, in every house in town a television, on every radio the sound of the devil's music.

_For the times they are a-changin'..._

"You could come up to Lookout Point with me." Joanna's red nails lightly trail down his forearm, and goosebumps pimple along Gale's skin. She looks up at him from under her lashes, biting down on the tip of her thumb. And he considers it for a moment, he really does, but he's been down that road before: sinking down into her warm wet softness, hearing her mewl as she claws his back, begging him to empty himself inside of her, anything to fill the gaping hole inside them both.

Joanna purrs as she runs a finger up his chest, playing with his collar. "It ain't as pretty, but we can go down to the Slag Heap if you've a mind to get ham-hocked." There's no reason he should refuse her. Thom will be there, after all, and every other man on the crew. Right now, nothing sounds better than drinking so hard he can't see straight, anything except thinking about the letter in his pocket.

Gale looks down at Joanna for a moment, and he hears what she's saying to him, offering him a way out tonight, a way to forget that in two days, he'll be on a train to his army training, where they'll put a gun in his hands and send him off to the jungle, and there will be no more Saturday nights like this one, where all he has to worry about is which pretty girl he'll be taking home.

(All of them. None of them. Any of them except the only one he wants, the only one he's ever wanted, the one he can never have at all.)

He fingers the ribbon wrapped around his wrist, threadbare now, but once as sky blue as the bottles that hang from the chinaberry tree outside his mother's front door - as if it is what is keeping him tethered to this town, like a candle burning against the darkness. "Nah, not tonight."

"Well, if you want something to take the edge off, you know where to find me." Joanna pouts dramatically, one hand on her hip. She winks, then, and leaves him, a cloud of Chanel in her wake.

As if his body has a mind of its own, Gale finds himself hopping back in the truck, and bringing it around to the parking lot. The carhop is jumping tonight, hormones and energy pumping out of every sleek car, on beat with the music.

_Stay… just a little bit longer…_

Gale parks in the back, near the tree line, and cuts the engine. The place is full of Townies, all dressed to the nines, the boys with shaggy Beatles hair and the girls in mini skirts and beehives. In his work denim and his button down plaid shirt, Gale feels suddenly old beyond his years and out of place, as though he's peeped into a pinhole camera of an era gone by, one he never belonged to, was never a part of. These boys have never spent twelve hours down in a mining shaft, working every muscle as they pick coal. They've never left school to become breaker boys, separating the impurities from the coal. They do not know what it's like to descend down into the darkness, day after day after day, until it is like you have never known the light.

"What would you like?" The voice, a car over, arrests him in his tracks, and Gale feels his whole body shiver with recognition.

It's the voice that's haunted his dreams since the summer of 1961, sleepy afternoons and strawberry kisses. It's the haunting melody of the piano drifting through the dusty air as he makes his way to the mine in the dawnlight, pricking memories long buried: of her in his arms, twirling around in that big, empty gazebo. That slate-tiled gazebo, with the big cupola, with lots of shady corners for stealing kisses. It was where Madge Undersee had her debutante ball, as Gale watched from the shade of the sycamore tree in his ill-fitting suit, and knew he could never be a part of her world.

He'd taken employment in the mine the very next day, and the day he'd turned eighteen he'd gone down in the pit for the first time, the memory of the girl he could never have seared forever on his heart.

•••

Gale hasn't seen Madge Undersee since the morning after the debutante ball, when he'd met her under the sycamore tree just past the edge of the sprawling gardens, where once he'd carved their initials together: _M+G_.

She'd been wearing white, he recalls: a frothy camisole, so fine he could see the outline of her breasts and feel the answering swell in his denim jeans, and pine green silk pajama pants that hugged her delicate curves. Gale knew that if he touched her, the silk would whisper over her skin, that she'd make a little moan in her throat, and that her lips would be velvety and plush, tasting of clouds and cream as he parted them with the tip of his tongue.

If he kissed her, he'd be unable to finish what he came to do, and that's the one thing that killed him, to take the only thing good and fine in his world, and make what lay between them something cheap.

He thought about her father, and the suitcase of money, money that could have fed his whole family for a year, and bought a new house besides, were he the kind of man who didn't have his pride, the kind of man who didn't know right from wrong. He was seventeen, but he's been a man since he was twelve, the night his father died and mantle of responsibility, of family, came to lay on his shoulders.

Madge smiled up at him, handing him a tiny teacup filled with black coffee, his big, rough working man's hand nearly engulfing her own. For a moment, he let his hand linger on hers, until her cheeks turned pink, and then he took a step back, the space between them thick with words unspoken. There was an eyelash on her cheek, he wanted to blow it off, he wanted to make a wish. But the time had passed for such foolish fancies.

_My daughter is not for you, Gale Hawthorne,_ Mayor Undersee had said gently, the suitcase lying on the table between them like Pandora's Box, the sounds of the party drifting up from below. There was a line of coal smudged along the cuff of Gale's suit jacket, and he tugged at his sleeve, feeling the poorly constructed seams give out just a touch.

The tux belonged to Thom's pa, who was as of a mind as Gale's in that a suit was only for marrying and burying. _Not fucking around at a party to impress some high class piece of tail._ Gale had never wanted to deck the elderly man more in his entire life.

_I wanna hold your hand_, crooned Paul McCartney on the record player.

Under the ancient sycamore tree, Madge's eyes were as deep and blue as the Delft china plates in the display case at the five and dime, and the little gold flecks danced like specks of sunlight as she gazed up at him. When he spoke, tears sprung to her eyes, and her teacup fell to the roots of the tree, shattering and spilling like the sound a heart makes when it shatters beyond hope or repair.

High in the tree, a pair of mated bluebirds sang, to usher in the morning.

•••

There she is, Miss Prim and Proper, the Debutante herself: Madge Undersee. And she looks better than ever, if that's possible: golden and slender, with legs that go on forever. Gale can't help but drink every bit of her in, as if he hasn't been able to stop thinking of her since the day they parted, as if he's never thought about walking up to the front door of her house and asking if she's home. But he heard from Katniss that Madge went up to university in Charlottesville, and he'd thought that after that, she'd never return.

He's heard a rumor that Madge got engaged, that she's marrying Seneca Crane, the son of a senator, the china already picked and the invitations sent out.

_If that's the truth, why is Madge working at the carhop?_ She should be making her wedding trousseau. She should be shopping all over Paris with her Daddy's money, and buying French lingerie for that stuck up rich man, to lie in his big bed with the hundred count sheets, and let him taste her sweetness.

_Like clouds and cream. Like strawberries_.

"Fuck!" Gale presses his forehead to his hands, which are clenched on the steering wheel.

He should drive out of here right now. He should go home and get a good sleep in his own bed. He should… But he won't. And, catching himself rubbing the satin ribbon around his wrist again, he knows why.

_Madge Undersee. _

He's halfway out of the car already when he hears her voice again, and this time nothing can stop Gale Hawthorne from getting what he's come back for, from the one person he can't leave behind without saying goodbye.

•••

"Please, please don't." Madge vainly bats at the hands groping her ass, and for a moment she's back in the frat house, trying to push Seneca off of her as his tongue goes down her throat and his knee forces her legs apart.

_You're so frigid, Margreta. Don't be such a goddamned prude_.

"You heard the lady. She said no."

It's like she's imagining things. _Gale Hawthorne. _Standing between her and Cato Curlew, steel in his tone. His voice ripples with command, and Madge feels a trickle of warmth low in her belly, though she's still angry with him, after all these cold years apart.

Why is he here now, when he's stayed away for so long? Doesn't he know that she no longer needs him, that she stopped waiting for him long ago? "I don't need your help," Madge informs Gale's broad shoulders. "Go away."

She can hear the sneer in Cato's voice. "That ain't no lady." He spits a stream of tobacco on the asphalt. "Everyone with half a brain knows that she's been spreading her legs for any Seam bastard who asks since she was sixteen."

Gale grabs Cato by the shirt, and blood sprays against the mirror on the door. Cato comes out swinging, shaking his head like a bull before he charges at Gale. Madge screams, and they all come running, the boys laying bets, the girls huddled to the side and watching through their fingers, titillated and horrified all at once.

The two men square off on the blacktop, Cato big and square and stocky, Gale tall and broad-shouldered but with a latent strength honed from years swinging a pickaxe. Cato is bleeding from the nose, and his fists are up as he and Gale circle one another. Madge has heard the stories, Cato killed the last man he fought in a brawl, down in Wheeler.

"Don't! Stop!" She tries to dart between them, but Wheatley Mellark grabs her arm, hauling her back.

"You'll just make it worse," he murmurs in her ear.

"Get him, Cato!" Cato's friend Marvel cups his hands and lets out a wild yell, and Cato surges forward like he's been shot from a cannon. "Show that Seam bastard what we do to coal miners who think they can touch Town women!"

Madge is pale, she is shaking. "_Stop them,_" she begs Wheatley and Delly, who has appeared at her other side, a serious look on her face.

Gale and Cato circle one another on the gray, cracked asphalt, dust rising in the air.

"That's right," Gale taunts, his voice deep and carrying. "These dirty, coal-stained hands have touched Town women… While you're at your office with your secretary, I've been plowing your girlfriends… Your wives… And your momma, Curlew."

Cato roars, and charges Gale. Gale dodges Cato, turning and socking his fist into Cato's jaw. Cato spits out blood, lunging for Gale, and then both men are on the asphalt, rolling over and over with the smell of heat and blood in the air.

"Stop it! Gale Hawthorne, stop it right now!" Katniss comes gliding across the pavement, but Peeta Mellark, near the edge of the crowd, catches her arm, his mouth moving in words that Madge cannot make out, even if she wanted to.

She can hear nothing except the thud of flesh on flesh, and then Gale is on top of Cato, punching and punching him, and suddenly the wail of police sirens can be heard coming down the avenue, and Madge snaps out of her coma.

"We have to go!" Madge yanks on Gale's arm, hard, and he resists her for only a moment before snapping back into focus, his dark gray eyes gone soft as he looks at her. She doesn't want to think about what that means, not right now, not when this could all be taken away in an instant. Cato is Town, and his daddy is a rich man besides. Gale is Seam. A night in jail would be the lightest of sentences Gale could pray for.

So instead, Madge leans forward, cupping Gale's jaw, and whispers in his ear, "Now," and Gale, stumbling like a drunk in the dark, doesn't question her when she jumps into the truck beside him and grinds the gears, and they speed off into the night.

•••

"You're an idiot." Madge presses the damp napkin a little too hard to Gale's jaw, and he winces, trying to pull away. "You know that?" Her voice is low and furious, and he thinks he's never been more intrigued by her than at this very moment, all her ladylike poise gone, the air between them crackling like lightning about to strike.

"Maybe if you had stayed where you were supposed to be -" Gale growls, turning his jaw from her ministrations. "On _your_ side of town - Then I wouldn't have had to step in in the first place!"

"I don't see how it's any of your business where I spend my time, or who I spend it with!" Madge pushes on Gale's chest, and he laughs darkly. "What's _your_ problem?"

"You are! If you had just stayed in your place - the princess in her tower - instead of slumming it -" He'd kill any man who touched her without her permission, she has to know that.

Tears spring to the corners of her eyes, and for an instant Gale feels like a monster for wounding her, but - _You deserve this_, he reminds himself. She can't know that all he wants to do is to take her in his arms and kiss her tears away. He's already made his choice.

"I…" Madge turns her face away for a moment, composing herself. He wonders if she still sings to herself in her head. He wonders why he can feel the space between their bodies so keenly, why he still wants to pull her close, to open the door they locked so long ago. "I think you should take me home."

Gale swallows, turning his face to hers. In the moonlight, her profile would look at home stamped on an antique bronze coin, too beautiful to be anything but legendary. Wars have been fought over women like Madge Undersee, in times of old. She's everything that's wrong and right for him, and even though his heart says it's right, his mind whispers that it's _wrong, wrong, wrong_.

Gale leans toward Madge, who tenses, and as he wraps a finger around single golden curl, she turns her face up to him with a question in her eyes, that indent on her lower lip enchanting him as it did when he was a boy, begging to be explored by his tongue. His hand comes up, and he caresses the line of her jaw, feeling her tremble uncontrollably at his touch. "What are you so afraid of?" Gale whispers huskily, even though he knows the answer.

What he isn't expecting are the next words out of her mouth.

"I don't want Daddy to hear about…" she waves a hand to encompass their surroundings, or maybe the events that have taken place. "...this."

"I didn't ask for his damned approval." His laugh is rusty, as though it's been a long time since he's had anything to laugh about. "I bet Daddy _approves_ if he's got cash in his pockets instead of coal."

Madge reels back, as if she's been slapped. "Fuck you." Before Gale can process what's happening, the car door slams behind her, and she runs barefoot across the dark parking lot, and straight into the Slag Heap.

"Fuck!" Gale slams his hands on the dashboard, wincing. He leaves the door swinging, and runs after her.

She's standing at the bar when Gale catches up to her, her shoulders heaving, downing a shot of something amber, the heady scent of it already purring on her skin. "What do you want?" She slams the shot glass on the bar with a hiss, and Gale grabs her by the shoulders, unsure of what he intends to do right up until this moment.

"Another shot," the bartender drawls, and Gale slams it down, and then he's kissing Madge Undersee, his hands cupping that little heart shaped face, his thumbs stroking her jawline, the taste of her as raw and real as though it's been home all along, as if he's never known it until she's back in his arms, pliant and soft, nipping at her bottom lip, his tongue meeting hers, tasting of amber and cream and the mist that rises off the mountains in the morning.

Madge pulls back, and slaps him, hard. "You _bastard_." There's a round of shocked applause, led by Joanna, who blows Gale a sultry kiss and a wink, leaning against her pool cue before lining up her shot.

But Gale isn't here for Joanna tonight. "Madge!" Gale bellows, past caring what anyone thinks. His long strides overtake her in the parking lot, and he finds her leaning against the cab of his truck, her shoulders shaking.

"Get me out of here, Gale," Madge whispers, her voice raw.

He touches her gently, as though she is a wild doe that might startle or frighten, and she surprises him by turning around and falling into his arms, her face pressed to his chest, her heart matching the beat of his own. He lifts her tear streaked face with one finger, and then she stands on tip-toe, and they are kissing again, slow and soft and sure, as if all the time they've spent apart has been leading up to this moment.

•••

**Author's note: thank you for your wonderful review, darley! If anyone else cares to review, i will reply to all reviews with a PM so make sure you're logged in. ****So, I just wanted to let you all know that the first part is very Gadge-centric. I have the whole thing outlined, and will be updating the first story in the series every day. After I hit my chapter buffer, it will switch to once a week. Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and feel free to leave constructive crit if you like, since it's been ages since I've read the books. Remember, reviews = updates!**


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

"You don't have to do that." Katniss grumbles as wipes a hand over her forehead, but she doesn't protest when Peeta starts scrubbing dishes beside her, up to his elbows in soapy water, stacking the plates one by one to be rinsed.

"Is this what you do every night, Katniss?" He doesn't wait for her answer, but continues on as if they've been friends forever, as if he's earned the right to chastise her, as if she's talked to him since she was eleven. _The boy with the bread_. "You don't owe him anything, you know. You just think you do."

"What do you know about it?" Katniss might set the plate down a little too hard, it cracks and splinters, and when she lifts her hand up, blood wells along the lines of her palm.

Peeta moves faster than she's ever seen him, wrapping a dry dish towel around her hand and tying it in a knot. "Sit down." He guides her to one of the kitchen stools. "Hold your hand above your head." He clasps her hand in his, holding it up. "It helps with the healing when you elevate it above your heart," he explains.

"I _do_ know about wound care," Katniss lies through her teeth. "You should be a doctor."

Something dark flickers through Peeta's eyes, and he breaks his gaze for a moment, as though the spider web hanging over the back window has suddenly become infinitely fascinating. "What are you doing for university?" he asks instead of answering her question. "I heard you got a scholarship. Your mom must be proud."

Her mother? Katniss blanches. She doesn't want to think about Gerda, who she refuses to even call Mother. _Not anymore_. Gerda stopped being _Mother_ after she came back from Richmond the first time. "I guess."

He doesn't look convinced.

Katniss thinks about snatching her hand away, but something about this feels nice, someone else taking care of her, when she's the one who's had to take care of everyone else for so long. She can't help but sneak a glance at the baker boy. _Peeta_, a little voice reminds her. He's grown his golden hair out shaggy, like a Beatle, and he has the beginnings of sideburn mutton chops. _He looks like a beatnik with that terrible hair, _she judges unkindly. "I haven't decided on a major yet."

That's not exactly a lie, but it's not exactly the truth either, and Peeta picks the thread right up, teasing it out of her. "I've read all your articles for the paper. You're really good. I think you should be a reporter, or a journalist."

"_All_ of them?" Katniss hopes he can't see her blush. _How embarrassing._ Not only is she in the kitchen of the carhop with a townie, holding his hand (_Which he wouldn't even be doing if you hadn't cut it on accident, you complete idiot_, a little voice chides her), but he's read her articles too?

"Yeah. They're great." Peeta is earnest, no hint of irony in his tone.

"Even the one about how to get mold out of 'every housewife's tile grout'?" Katniss can't help it, she starts laughing, holding her other hand over her smile. She can't help but feel a little flattered, though at the time she'd ranted and raved to Madge and Delly for over an hour about how she was being used by the paper for mindless domestic rot, when all she wanted were real articles, something to really sink her teeth into.

_Like the mine collapse. _

It all comes back to that, around and around in her mind. Her father, talking about the importance of organizing a union at the kitchen table to her and her sister. Three weeks later, he was dead, and his whole crew with him.

"You get this little crinkle between your eyes when you're thinking about something serious." Peeta reaches out, and then drops his hand, as if thinking better of it. "Sorry, it's just… You do. And for the record, yes, I've enjoyed all your articles. I really liked the one you did about Founder's Day, and the mysterious tale of the old Number Eleven Mine."

Goosebumps run down Katniss's arms at the mention of that mine. Even though it must be ninety degrees with one hundred percent humidity, the thought still makes her blood run cold. "You know the story, right? The real one, the one the paper wouldn't let me print?"

Peeta sits down next to Katniss, still holding her palm up. Somehow their faces are close enough that she can feel his breath tickling her cheek, and she closes her eyes, trying to keep her breath steady. _It must be the heat._ It must be the blood loss, or the shock. That's why her heart is pounding so hard she fears it will leap out of her chest, isn't it?

(_Isn't it?_)

"No. I've only heard the ghost story. My brothers used to tell me that if I was bad, Mutti would take me to Number Eleven and throw me down the hole, because that's where all the bad children go." Peeta pauses, his voice dropping below a whisper. "Straight to hell."

Katniss shakes her head. They've all been to the Number Eleven Mine, it's a popular dare amongst preteens and teenagers, to spend a night just beyond the door. They say that anyone who spends a full night there, under a full moon, goes fully insane, that they're never right again. As a child, Katniss explored the woods for miles around with Gale, and they'd found what they believed to be part of the old mine shaft, cut as deep in the hills as a witch's pin stabs a poppet. The rear door was scored with what looked like the fingernail gouges of a hundred men. She's never been back.

"Katniss?"

She realizes Peeta is still waiting, and when he hands her a glass of water, it tastes cool and green, like the spring that flows from the mountain, with water that preserves eternal youth forever. "They were trying to organize. Something exploded in the mine. It started to collapse. They made it to the elevator when the tunnels flooded. They locked the door, Peeta." She doesn't realize how stricken she sounds until he squeezes her hand. "Ow!"

Peeta is horrified. "I'm sorry, Katniss!"

It's the second time he's said her name aloud tonight, she remembers. First at that stupid fight - "Where's Gale?" Katniss demands in alarm.

Peeta strokes his chin, looking thoughtful. "With Madge. You think they should have been back by now?"

Katniss hasn't even realized she's been clenching one hand into a fist, and she releases it with a growl. "She's the reason he went down the mine in the first place." Her voice is threaded with the old bitterness. The mine took more than her hunting partner away, it took her friend, too. "Trying to impress some stuck up debutante townie!"

Peeta squeezes her hand gently. "I heard the other side of the story. She's not a bad person - you used to be her friend too, you know."

Katniss doesn't answer right away. Her feelings for Gale have always been… complicated. On one hand, he's practically her cousin, on the other, the thought of him getting his heart broken again by Madge Undersee makes her want to claw the other girl's eyes out. "I'm still angry with her."

"And I'm angry with him." When Katniss looks askance at Peeta, he blushes. Hard. "What? You think that just because she hurt him, she deserves to be ostracized?" He shakes his head. "You Seam folk hold a grudge to the grave, don't you? Go on, then. Keep telling me about Number Eleven."

Katniss has to take a deep breath, her mind churning. "Right." This close, she can see little green flecks in his eyes, and she's surprised she's never noticed them before. "So… Imagine this." She leans in, close enough to touch, and he gazes at her, serious, focused intently on what she's about to say.

•••

Madge and Gale barely make it into the truck before they're tearing at one another's clothes. She straddles him, and his mouth slams onto hers, tugging on her lower lip and dragging it between his teeth. She rakes her nails down his chest, his hands are in her hair, tongue penetrating her mouth hard and deep as she rocks her hips against his.

"Debutante," he taunts her, his hands sliding up her thighs, gripping her ass and kneading it with his fingers.

"Miner." Madge hisses between her teeth as Gale's fingers swiftly undo the buttons at the nape of her neck, and he yanks the dress down to her waist, his mouth hot on her nipples through the fabric of her brassiere.

"Fancy." Gadge snaps the lacy strap against her shoulder, reaching around her back to unhook it. "You buy this for him?"

"Not everything I buy is for him, Gale." Madge lays a chiding finger on his lips, and he kisses her fingertip, yanking her hips forward so fast that she can feel every hard, bulging inch of his thick length pressing between her legs, making her skin buzz.

"_Good_." His ferocious declaration takes her by surprise, after all, she'd always thought that she was the only one left unmoored and bereft by how things ended between them, back on that warm summer morning, when all the birds were singing. "That means I'm the first and the last man to see you in it."

She doesn't ask what he means by that, because her veins are on fire with her craving for him. "_Gale_," Madge moans, raking his broad chest with her nails.

Outside the fogged windows of the truck, the moon is as big as a house: folk will talk about it for days, and it will be written up in the paper as a superstitious premonition. But Madge doesn't think about any of that, for all she can see in the moonlight is her lover's handsome face, and feel their body pulse in time as she rocks against him.

_I can't stay… Maybe I'll be back someday… _

His mouth is everywhere, making her feel hot and delirious: pressing gentle kisses along her jawline, nipping along the delicate skin of her neck, driving her into a frenzy of _want_ and _need_, all tangled up inside her head.

_It's only been with you_, she wants to say, but her brain is dizzy with his kisses. The words _frigid_ and _prude_ hold no sway as Madge runs her hand along Gale's stubbled jaw, his mouth crashing against hers, his hands cupping her head as his tongue delves inside of her mouth. She grasps a fistful of his shirt, running her hands up underneath it, his flesh is burning hot.

He groans, and the kiss deepens, they both cling to one another and rock harder, deeper: she is chasing something sweet and warm and hot that flutters through her veins. All she can taste and smell is _him_, pine and oak moss, and coal, always coal, gritty and dark, the seam of him running under her skin and setting it ablaze.

"I need to taste you, starling," Gale rasps huskily, and he cups her breasts in his hands, flicking first one nipple and then the other with the tip of his tongue. "Do you like this?"

Madge threads her fingers through his dark hair, pushing his head down. This is different from their fumblings in the backseat of the Rolls Royce in the car garage, there is more of an instinct here, as though their bodies remember. "_Gale_," she gasps, struggling to hold back her low, liquid moan before realizing there is no longer any need to keep her voice down. "_Gale!_" she gasps again, louder this time, and guides his hand between her legs.

Time stops, it fractures, it freezes: Madge throws her head back and makes a low, guttural whimper in her throat as Gale's calloused fingers swipe across the damp strip of fabric. With a low growl, he pushes it aside, burying two fingers deep inside of her. "You're fucking soaked," he growls, kissing up her neck and claiming her mouth with his own. As his tongue meets hers, he begins to slide his fingers in and out of her, up over the tiny bundle of nerves at the apex of her sex, and then plunging inside her again, curling his fingers and teasing her core.

She rises and falls against his fingers, there is a delicious sensation building along every nerve ending, each crescendo turning to an arpeggio, her body soaring higher and higher up the scale. The thumb and forefinger of his other hand begins to twist her nipples gently, firmly, and she meets his eyes, steady and gray, dark with desire.

"It's all right, starling," he croons. "I've got you."

And Madge soars. She screams as she comes, hips bucking hard against his hand, gripping his shirt and kissing him desperately, her body shaking as she comes completely undone in his arms.

When Madge opens her eyes, Gale is gazing at at her in wonder, as though she is a pagan idol of some ancient goddess, long forgot, and he's come to worship her. She raises a hand, stroking the side of his face, and he turns his head and kisses the soft skin of her wrist, making her quiver.

"I want you inside of me, coal miner," she chokes out, and a smug grin flashes across his face before it is replaced by his fierce gaze.

"Lie down," Gale growls, a command in his voice that she acquiesces to in an instant. He yanks her soaked panties off, bringing them to his nose and inhaling deeply before tossing them aside. He licks his fingers, staring down at her, one hand parting her slick folds. "I love how you taste when you fucking come for me, starling." His eyes are molten pools of quicksilver, and just as mercurial. "Bet you never came for _him_ like that."

The shadow of Seneca Crane flickers between them, and Madge has an uncomfortable memory of lying utterly still under her grunting, sweating fiancé as her spirit seemed to detach from her body and hover above her in the room. "I'm yours. I've _always_ been yours." She breathes out the heartfelt confession like admitting her darkest sin, and Gale is mollified.

He yanks his shirt over his head, and unbuckles his jeans. His chest is lightly furred, and a line of dark hair runs down his taut abdomen to the waistband of his briefs. She traces it with her finger, and he inhales sharply, placing his hands over hers and pushing his briefs down.

His cock is twice as long and twice as thick as she remembers it being. Gale lifts her ankles to his shoulders, and eases into her, giving her time to adjust to his girth. She moans, cupping her breasts, and when she meets his eyes, his pupils are blown out with lust. Instinctively, Madge raises her hips, and Gale plows into her like he'd claimed to plow the wives and girlfriends of the men in town.

_Whoever taught him taught him well… _

but she's just conceited enough to believe that he remembers their first time, because then he's covering her body with his, moving slow and deep, and she is burning up with the sensation of him inside of her, stretching her deliciously, kissing her neck, her collarbone, his tongue plunging inside of her mouth as he thrusts hard and deep inside her core.

Their hips rock together, the truck shakes, Madge is chanting his name as he leans on his elbows above her, groaning, and he flips her over, his chest pressed to her back, his hands cupping her breasts, the two of them moving together, harder, faster, slick with sweat.

"Gale… I…" Madge squeezes her eyes shut, tightening around him, and then she's coming again, _again_, again, the sensation of it completely taking over her body as she jerks and screams his name, his hand buried in her hair as he pulls her face around to bury his tongue in her mouth, flipping her over yet again and pounding into her with such a look of intense concentration that her heart seizes when their eyes lock, and then he explodes inside of her, slumping to her chest, their hearts beating as one.

•••

Later, they wake, and make love again, but this time further down the road, in the meadow, where the grass hums with the sway of sleeping wildflowers and crickets chirp between their moans, muffled by the rushing water of the creek as it flows by, his fingers digging into her hips, her cries swallowed by his mouth, or perhaps the wind.

•••

The wind blows outside, rattling the window frame, and Peeta jerks out of the spell of Katniss Everdeen's story for just a moment before falling back inside.

Years later, he will look back at this moment, he will wonder why he never wrote it all down. He will wonder why the memory of her voice on that Saturday night, back in Twelvetrees, West Virginia, is still enough to make him cry. He turns back to Katniss, allowing her story to wash over him the same way that the flood washed over the miners trapped in the shaft of Number Eleven, a baptism and a drowning, when there was still hope for heaven.

Katniss doesn't realize she's crying until Peeta's thumb swipes under her lashes. "... the paper wouldn't let me print it. They said 'there are still people around who are descended from the mine owners'. So it got swept under the rug, like it never happened." Katniss jerks away from Peeta, rubbing a hand over her cheeks. "I'm okay now."

"At least let me walk you home." Peeta looks at the clock over the kitchen sink. "It's late and you don't want to be out there alone."

"In Twelvetrees, West Virginia, on a Saturday night?" Katniss looks askance at Peeta. "I can take care of myself."

"It's for me, not for you." She can already tell he isn't going to take no for an answer, and resigns herself to it. "Come on. You can tell me about the article you want to write about the Number Twelve mine explosion in '55." His voice is suddenly gentle, so gentle she thinks she might cry again. "I'd want to set the record straight too, if it were my dad."

•••

Gale leaves Madge sleeping in her bed, kissing her forehead gently before swinging his big frame out the window, just as he used to do, long ago. They didn't say the words tonight, but he's pretty sure that every kiss, every caress was a paean to their feelings, long denied.

He can't think about what comes next, but he can think about this, and he knows he'll carry it with him now, and he's strong enough to go wherever he must go, because he'll carry Madge within his heart.

•••

Peeta can't even remember what they talked about, though he'll later wish he committed every moment to waking memory. All he remembers is the sound of her laughter, and the way she brushed her dark hair back from those dark gray eyes to look up at him. And when he'd hugged her goodbye - it had been a _real_ hug, their bodies pressed up together, and she'd made a small sigh in the back of her throat that made his throat close up, yearning to kiss her so badly, but holding himself back from it.

Peeta shoves his hands in his pockets, feeling the letter there with him like an old mine shaft door, and he wonders if someday, he'll be able to set himself free of it, or if it will be buried down deep forever, like a story the children still tell in the dark.

_song: north country blues. _

**FIN.**

**Author's note: to be continued! Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews, they keep me going. **


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